International Women's Day Doodle 2016: #OneDayIWill

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try

While I have done athletic activities pretty much all of my life (from being a sports student in secondary school to a grown up with a personal trainer at the gym...), I have never considered myself to be a runner and, in fact, never loved running.  In more recent years and facing many changes in life, I came to the confronting fact that aiming at maintaining a healthier life style meant to start running. When I did so, I couldn't run 500 metres to save myself, but I was an efficient walker and so, kept slowly progressing. By March 2014 I took the challenge of running my first "mini-marathon"  (8 km)  and, far from feeling comfortable, I did finish it and felt really proud and excited of my achievement.  I was also very happy as I could see myself  dropping weight and feeling fit and healthier than ever before. From that moment I started to train in a more serious way, with continuous definition of targets supported by proper training plans from MyAsics.com. 
By October 2014, I had my first 10K official running finishing with the time of 1h16m. From there the training plans were set towards the goal of cutting time and about one year later, I got to my ever best 10K official race time; 1h and 18 secs ! That was November 2015. 

I can write many lines about happy and proud I was of my self - I could run better, stronger & faster cutting time and moving down, in one year, from 7m/km to 6.01 m/km. Instead, I'll just write a simple line; YES, major change is possible and YES, it will most probably cause pain. Changing is a step-by-step process and not a smooth transition - so, when the process is full of pain and frustration, how to find the motivation to keep on moving? 

Theories about change recognize that transforming deep-seated behaviors, attitudes or habit habits is difficult, and if such change is to be successful, certain conditions must be met both in design as well as in implementation. Intentional Change Theory framework underpins that successful development programs consist of five stages, where the 4th stage is practice, adjustment of behavior, experimentation and more practice.

So, only with constant effort, experimentation and practice new behaviors will emerge... just like running, a road to self-awareness and reliance even if based in a process where one is pushed to extremes and learns the harsh reality of its own physical and mental limitations. It is itself the journey to change (eg, the training) that fuels the way by offering dynamic goals that helps to bring out the best. So, "walk the talk" means pain, practice and practice and practice - that is the way to do it, to reach each of the smaller goals whilst becoming much closer to the final target. Same to say, "no pain, no gain".

Back to November 2015; a new short-term goal, simple and made in community - to run 10K in less than 1 hour and after that, start to train for the half-marathon! Be sure such words instantly mean "pain, pain, pain"- will I be able to do it? Let's see in next March.

For now here I am - exhausted but exhilarated in a moment where everything seems right, where pain seems just a collection of memories that somehow moved me closer to my target.  7 February 2016, 20Km, done !

The 2015 in review

The world in 2015 review:

Click for The Guardian recap of a year defined as "living dangerously" 

How to make New Year's Resolution really work

Do New Year's Resolutions really work?
Yes, it seems so; accordingly to Dr. Mike Evans, seems that you are more likely to stick to a change if you made it at New Year's. But, what is the science behind this when so many of us have made them and know they often don’t stick?

A study refer that only 8% of people who make resolutions suceed in keeping them - 75% of resolutions is continued through the entire 1st week of January however only about 46% make it past 6 months. This is according to the University of Scranton that lists losing weight was the number-one commitment, followed by getting organized and spending less (or saving more). 

Well, not the be the bearer of bad news, but if your New Year’s resolution is “get healthy and lose weight", you might be setting yourself up for failure, since those studies also indicate that true life change takes root when goals are short-term, simple, written down, and made in community.

One of the biggest keys in making changes in your life is to believe you are capable of growing & changing.  And YOU ARE ! But where to start?

First, you'll do better if you reflect beforehand, as Dr. Evans recommends, and more closely look at the behaviors you want to change. Most behaviors are automatic, done without thoughtful consideration; so, if you want to change habits, watch yourself more and look for the little decisions you make just before the autopilot takes you the rest of the way. Look at the contexts in which you want to change your behavior (eg, at work, at home, on the road) and on what triggers the autopilot behavior you want to change.
Plan before the next time you'll be in that particular context and do some creative problem solving: what is the easiest, best other choice you could make without too much frustration? How can you make that choice easier to chose? What tricks can you use to move your autopilot into a different path? If you do a bit of research, you can get even better answers.

On this short video lesson "How to Suceed with your New Years Resolutions" - available both on TedEd and on DocMikeEvans YouTube Channel, some simple tricks are explained and will help to understand how to facilitate change.
 
Mike Evans is the founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto, and a staff physician at St. Michael's Hospital. He develops innovative health messaging for the world. Dr. Evans work has been profiled in a wide range of publications from JAMA to Walrus, and the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black.

Finding purpose in work

Last Wednesday I had the chance of listening to Prof. Miguel Pina e Cunha in a key-note speach dedicated to the theme "What is your purpose?". Drawing from the Harvard Business Review article "From purpose to impact" (May 2014, by Nick Craig & Scott Snook) and from the story of the man that serves at the toll at Ponte 25 de Abril in Lisbon, this talk was about self-awareness and "big questions in life" that might move people towards finding their purpose ... not goals... not mission... purpose...
Money alone isn’t enough to push us to do our best - says Daniel Pink - author and expert on the nature of work, listing meaning and purpose as core motivators, alongside autonomy and mastery.

So, how to find purpose through work? Research from late 90's  (Amy Wrzesniewski et. al) presented evidences suggesting that most people see their work as either a Job (focus on financial rewards and necessity), a Career (focus on advancement), or a Calling (focus on enjoyment of fulfilling, useful work).

In the context of leadership, this process often results in more clarity about each leader's purpose, values, and motivations, and the role these play when that person is leading others. In this line, purpose is a choice and people have purpose in every job and profession; it seems to have more to do with attitude and approach than about the work itself ... In fact, we all can remember about people who work (for example) in medicine and don’t get much purpose from it as well as remember about people in the so called “dirty jobs” that, in turn, get tremendous purpose from what they do. 

Very often people get more purpose and enjoyment out of things when doing something that helps them master what they do, and, at the same time, feel like they are doing something that has an impact. Purpose seems then something that comes much more "along the journey", resulting from "trying and doing", in a process that allows one person to become aware of what matters for he / she, how does he/she learns, how does he/she wants to be challenged and how he/she wants to help other people; a gradual process that brings light to understanding what are the things which serves us well (eg, the ones we accept and commit to) and which ones do not (eg, the ones we need to commit to change).

The making of an expert - Gladwell and Ericsson and the 10.000 hour rule

There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. However on his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and argues that to understand how some people thrive, one should spend more time looking around them and at such things as family, birthplace, or even birth date.

Throughout the book, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-hour rule", claiming that the key to achieving world class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours.

Anders Ericsson is widely recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental researchers on expertise, sharing such view as you can read this article.

But Malcolm and Ericsson likewise also argue:  before practice, opportunity, and luck can combine to create expertise, the would-be expert needs to demythologize the achievement of top-level performance, because the notion that genius is born, not made, is deeply ingrained. It’s perhaps most perfectly exemplified in the person of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who is typically presented as a child prodigy with exceptional innate musical genius. Nobody questions that Mozart’s achievements were extraordinary compared with those of his contemporaries. What’s often forgotten, however, is that his development was equally exceptional for his time. His musical tutelage started before he was four years old, and his father, also a skilled composer, was a famous music teacher and had written one of the first books on violin instruction. Like other world-class performers, Mozart was not born an expert—he became one.

Coaching for learning and development

Whatever the context, people learn most effectively when they are keen to learn and have a clear focus on where and what they want to develop. Thus, it is most helpful that when in a coaching programme you make an initial reflection on your current concerns and challenges, what you would like to address and discuss and what you hope to take away with you at the end of the process.  

Effective coaching often addresses long term issues and challenges rather than simply dealing with the a specific event and a coaching session is not as a standard business meeting; it is the talking and reflection around the core issue that facilitates the discovery of "what the issue really is", leading to moments of relevant insight something not so simple to attain when using a narrowed focus or fixed itens for agenda.

The "focused but flexible" approach is usually of added value both client and coach since it draws for an agreement about actions or ideas to be tried out, upporting the client to put in action what ever that as come out of the reflection and of the feelings from the experience. This also means that there is a reasonable hard work in the coaching sessions as well as in between sessions, both on  reflection and practice levels.  

No client should expect the coach to provide the content of discussion or expect that the coach to ‘tell’ the answers; it is the discovery provoked by the process that allows learning and development for the client, reason why sometimes coaching is not always completely confortable - but will for sure be supportive, enabling and of added value.
At the end, people sometimes come out surprised - sometimes perhaps a little disconcerted - due to what after seems to be "obvious" but all of that is due to what has been unlocked along the process, the sum of the many challenges the client as faced and surpass with full engagement with the coach.
This is often called the release of potential.